Run Run As Fast As You Can..

This week was all about the GINGERBREAD MAN, which is one of my favorite themes of the year.

We kicked off the week by reading the original tale of The Gingerbread Man and discussed the story elements: Who were the characters? What was the refrain? How did it end? I always love seeing my students' reactions when it comes to the scary ending with the fox. They get SO into the story! Throughout the week, I read different variations of the Gingerbread Man, including The Gingerbread Bear, The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers, and Gingerbread Friends. We did a journal page to illustrate how each book ended and we talked about the similarities and differences among the books. Down below are our illustrations for the original story where Fox ends up eating Gingerbread Man.

Look at poor Gingerbread Man's head poking out--ha! Cracks me up.

Then we read Gingerbread Bear where it wasn't the Fox who ate him, but the PARK RANGER!

The students' confidence in their handwriting has just skyrocketed!. Earlier in the year, most of them were afraid to write anything, for fear they didn't know how to spell or sound words out. Now look at what they're producing. It's really rewarding to see the growth in them, and that it'll continue as the year goes on.

Next, we read The Gingerbread Girl Goes Animal Crackers. The animal crackers escaped from the Gingerbread Girl's house and ended up meeting up with the sneaky Fox. He had enticed them to ride on his back across the river until Gingerbread Girl came to the animal crackers' rescue and told them to shout in his ear. Foxes have super sensitive hearing and when they animals roared in his ear, fox ran away leaving the animal crackers unharmed. Phew!

In science, we did a science experiment where I posed the question: What would happen if Gingerbread Man would've actually crossed the river? Students had to come up with their own hypothesis (a smart, educated guess) on what they thought would happen. Some said he'll get smooshie (not quite a real word, but we all know what it means!), wet, mushy, and soft. Not many of us thought that he would stay hard and crunchy. We observed him after an hour, and then a whole day (24 hours) His body had broken apart and his dark brown color had faded to a light tan. We wrote down our conclusion for the experiment, which was that the Gingerbread Man would get soft and break when immersed in water.

In math, I did a few fun gingerbread activities. One lesson was where I gave each student a gingerbread cookie to eat, but that they could only eat ONE bite of it. Then I asked, "Which part of the gingerbread cookie did you eat first?" We made a bar graph showing who ate what and observed the data. Then I introduced the class to a PIE GRAPH and that it's called a pie graph because it shows "slices" of data.

As you can see, most of us ate his head first! The kids thought it was so cool that the graph looked like a pie or a pizza.

Another lesson we did is make gingerbread glyphs to show data about ourselves. Take a look at the poster to know what exactly our gingerbread boys and girls show.

We got in partners to talk about our glyphs with one another. What can you learn just from looking at someone else's glyph? It was fun to see them really understand what each part of the gingerbread represented.

We had gingerbread/holiday theme reading and math stations.

Counting and tallying numbers

Number order

Writing number words

Patterns

What numbers come before/after?

Skip counting by 5s

Scavenger hunt for words around the room

I spot 2 gingerbread houses, can you?

Word families

Rhyming words

Beginning letter sounds

Elf on the Shelf Spottings

Other Special News

Saint Nicholas and his horses must've came into our room over the weekend because when we arrived at school Monday morning, the hay and carrots were nibbled on and we had a special treat under our shoes!

Once again, for the third time now, our class was awarded a GOLDEN ITEM! This month, we got the Golden Recorder from Mrs. Furney in Music. I am beyond thrilled that we are being nominated for this special prize because the Specialists pick the classes (K through 5th grade). That's a lot to pick from, and yet, the specialist teachers see that our class is so respectful and hardworking. Yay to our class!

5 more days of school before Holiday Break!